| Sometimes taking a moment with a poem can help refresh us. Here are poems that many have found helpful. The Way It Is by William Stafford There's a thread you follow. It goes among things that change. But it doesn't change. People wonder about what you are pursuing. You have to explain about the thread. But it is hard for others to see. While you hold it you can't get lost. Tragedies happen; people get hurt or die; and you suffer and get old. Nothing you do can stop time's unfolding. You don't ever let go of the thread. New and Selected Poems The Road by Arlene Gay Levine Here is the road: the light comes and goes then returns again. Be gentle with your fellow travelers as they move through the world of stone and stars whirling with you yet every one alone. The road waits. Do not ask questions but when it invites you to dance at daybreak, say yes. Each step is the journey; a single note the song. (Bless the Day, ed. by June Cotner) Starfish by Mary Oliver In the sea rocks, in the stone pockets under the tide’s lip, in water dense as blindness they slid like sponges, like too many thumbs. I knew this, and what I wanted was to draw my hands back from the water – what I wanted was to be willing to be afraid. But I stayed there, I crouched on the stone wall while the sea poured its harsh song through the sluices, while I waited for the gritty lightning of their touch, while I stared down through the tide’s leaving where sometimes I could see them – their stubborn flesh lounging on my knuckles. What good does it do to lie all day in the sun loving what is easy? It never grew easy, but at last I grew peaceful: all summer my fear diminished as they bloomed through the water like flowers, like flecks of an uncertain dream, while I lay on the rocks, reaching into the darkness, learning little by little to love our only world. (Dream Work) Love after Love by Derek Walcott The time will come when, with elation, you will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror, and each will smile at the other’s welcome, and say, sit here. Eat. You will love again the stranger who was your self. Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart to itself, to the stranger who has loved you all your life, whom you ignored for another, who knows you by heart. Take down the love letters from the bookshelf, the photographs, the desperate notes, peel your own image from the mirror. Sit. Feast on your life. (Sea Grapes) |
Poems for Reflection
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| Contact Carol Walnum by calling 503-287-1526 |